


Waiting

by roguefaerie (samidha)



Category: American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Book Spoilers, Comment Fic, F/M, For the Book Nerds, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Seriously Last Warning, This Relationship Doesn't Mean The Same Thing In The Book As in the Show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-30 09:40:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12650994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samidha/pseuds/roguefaerie
Summary: Sometimes Shadow still waits for her.





	Waiting

**Author's Note:**

> _Let blood build a bridge  
>  Over mountains draped in stars  
> I'll meet you on the ridge  
> Between these worlds apart_  
> Bruce Springsteen: Worlds Apart

Laura could say the cruelest, most detached things. She knew she could. And she didn't--she hadn't wanted it to be that way.

Not at first.

But sometimes familiarity breeds contempt.

And she knew this about herself, and she held it close as a secret next to her heart (maybe not inside of it but close enough), and she hadn't known how she felt, sometimes.

Tired, a lot.

Struggling, sometimes.

But often, cold.

Shadow left her cold.

And now she was cold all the time. Leaking effluvia of the dead all the time. A walking zombie, trying to work in air conditioned convenience stores and not arouse any suspicion.

And she would make it up to Shadow if she could, somehow.

If she could.

And she didn't exactly want to be dead.

Yet.

*~*~*

Shadow couldn't help it. Sometimes, he waited for her, still.

He waited to hear her call him _puppy_ , and he thought of those beginning times together.

Even though she was gone. Gone-not-gone. Gone notgone. Or whatever was going on.

He had met so many people. In the earth and under the earth, on the earth, from the stars, from the moon, or as the moon, he had even met himself.

And even that _fucking_ squirrel.

He had met everyone he needed to meet. And finally, though it had taken time, he had learned the (new) boundaries and rules of his world, how the world had changed and shifted and warped and morphed while he had lain in wait.

And in the end he knew that all things that die return to the earth, and Laura would too.

They were worlds apart, forever, now.

One day she would ask him to do as Czernobog had threatened. One day she would let go.

He steeled himself and waited. Waited for her, and waited for it to happen.


End file.
